"If I could do so without killing you, do you not think I would?" he responded, somewhat irritably. "The creature is attached to your heart, is becoming the very center of your body's functions. To destroy it would kill you. That is the way it was designed."
She stared sharply at him. "I don't want this."
"You have no choice if you want to live," he said bluntly.
"Yeah, but what will I be if I do?"
Climbing to her feet, she left him and crossed back to the book he'd been reading. He's been studying this, trying to find a way to help me. She cast a brief glance back over her shoulder. Does he really care for me, or is he doing this out of a sense of guilt?
"How far you are willing to go to survive what has happened?" he asked from behind.
The pain inside was sharp. "I…don't know," she quavered.
"Then I will clarify," he continued. "Accept the mutant as your ci'biote, and its strengths will become yours."
She turned around, brow wrinkling. "My what?"
He arched a brow, cocking his head. "Do you recall when I told you how a child of cultic heritage is infused with their hierarchical legacy after birth?"
Julienne shivered. That night she well recalled, not only because he had told her that the children were killed, deprived of mortal life, but because that night had been their first sexual encounter. Heat reddened her cheeks. Her flush darkened when she thought about how she'd submitted to his kisses and caresses like a depraved hussy.
His sexual style was fierce, aggressive. He allowed no inhibitions, nor did he grant any mercy. He had delved into her most intimate places.
"I remember." She quickly lowered her eyes.
He was looking at her now with real interest. He smiled, a slow sensual grin that clearly indicated he recalled the same incident.
Biting her lip, embarrassed that her blush was giving away the track her mind had suddenly veered off on, she turned back to the desk, planting her gaze on the old manuscript. She did not turn around. She waited, holding her breath, heart pumping like hummingbird wings in flight.
She heard him move. Put out his cigarette. Rise. Walk up behind her. Expecting him, she did not start when he touched her, took her by the shoulders, turned her around. His hands went to her hips as he pressed her back.
"It is the spirit that guides you in your immortal legacy," he whispered in her ear, his voice husky and compelling. "It helps you develop your talents as a multi-dimensional being."
Julienne felt her inner mercury rising at his closeness, his touch. His features, his build--indeed, his very presence was unrelentingly masculine. Even the subtle scent of his foreign cigarettes seemed intoxicating. She felt frail, very feminine next to his muscular form.
"Then it's some kind of companion?" she gasped, trying to ignore the lovely tingling sensation between her legs.
"No, not a companion. It is your soul, merged with energies that attune you to the untapped elements of the three worlds. If you allow it, I can change things for you, make the mutant better conform with the human body." His hands traced her arms. "You will change with it and come to possess many strengths. Nothing shall stop you as you move through the centuries."
She drew a deep breath, pushing him gently away. The way he was staring at her was unsettling. The man was bewitching her.
"And you no longer have it, do you? That's what you mean when you say you separated from your legacy."
He stepped back, giving her space. "Before I went into exile, I performed a ritual of separation and sent it into limbo."
"Then how can you do this for me?"
"Because I am going back to what I was before." His unnerving gaze bored into hers, and his accented words became clipped. "Never have I made this offer to another."
"Why do it now?" Julienne searched his face. For the first time, he was actually reaching out, asking her to join his world. She thought she saw a change, a new awareness in his eyes. No longer was his mind on his own selfish needs and wants. He was thinking of a future. His. Hers. Theirs.
"I am going to need you beside me," he said. "The battle is not over. It never was. I was a fool to walk away from it, and I will not make that mistake again."
Julienne was silent for a moment, hardly believing her ears. Had he said what she thought he had, that he needed her? She bit her lip. Her heart beat a little faster. Morgan had never admitted he really wanted her for more than a brief affair, for more than sexual release.
She forced herself to breathe more slowly, to shake herself out of the daze that held her. His mind might be invulnerable to her, but his body certainly had not been. They had set each other afire, and she knew then she had affected him more deeply than he cared to admit. She knew his words to be true--he needed her. She was the magical partner he had been crippling himself by denying.
"I'll stand beside you," she hurried to say. "You know that."
His mouth tilted up in a rueful smile. "It will not be easy. There are many trials to face."
"Because of Xavier?"
He shot her one of his inscrutable glances. "And Megwyn."
Julienne experienced a strange new fear beyond the powerlessness and loss she'd experienced so much lately. "I'd hoped you would have killed him."
Her voice was hard, bitter, but she couldn't help it.
"I did some damage, but not enough."
She lifted her eyes to his. "I want him dead."
"I will take care of him," he said. "But before you cross, there are some things I have to tell you."
"What?"
A shadow of unease briefly crossed his face. His mood had instantly changed. As always, she had the uncomfortable feeling he was deciding how best to walk away from her if he needed to.
"I have a past that is not pleasant." He caught her shoulders, his gaze drilling directly into hers, then said, with slow and extreme emphasis. "You know what I am, what I do for a living."
She tried to keep from flinching. His fingers were digging into her skin, as though he needed to hold her in place to say the words. She gave a weak smile, trying to reassure herself as much as she wanted to reassure him. "You're a mercenary. A hit-man. It didn't take much to figure that out about you, Morgan. I'm not blind."
"Then you should be aware that my past will affect you--on both sides--if you choose to stay with me."
"I see." She drew in a deep steadying breath. "I suppose a certain amount of danger would go along with that sort of…ah…lifestyle. I won't judge you for what you did in the past. I think I could understand."
His hands dropped. "So you say. But you do not know there was more than one reason I had to return to Sclyd." He unhooked the gold ring dangling from the end of his watch chain, holding it between thumb and forefinger so she could see it. "Xavier held a bond on my soul. This is that bond. Whosoever possesses this owns me. Completely.
She looked at the simple gold ring. How could it be so important?
"Having it now, you're free, aren't you?" she asked, puzzled.
Morgan tried to blank his face and failed. He pinched his eyebrows as if a headache had hit and avoided eye contact. She could immediately tell she had struck a very sensitive spot, an old wound that had not healed.
"Yes. But if it should fall from my hands I cannot retrieve it by force, do harm to its possessor. Nor can I employ my witchery without specific command."
Ah. Now she understood. "So, it literally keeps you enslaved?"
"It can. And rather than face that when Xavier had it, I walked away from the occult and went into exile here."
"You had no choice." She thought a minute. "How did he get it?"
Again the pause, the old wound opening, beginning to bleed.
"If it's something you don't want to tell me…"
He leveled a hard gaze at her. "He forged it in the fires of Gidrah, from the flesh, blood and bone of my lover's unborn child. My child."
Chapter Nineteen
His words hit her like a physical blow. Mind reeling,
the words echoed in her skull. Morgan's child?
"He murdered the woman carrying your baby?" There was a long and fearful silence. Watching, she could see a ridge of muscle tightening in his jaw.
"His was not the hand that took her life." His voice, with its strangely harsh undertones, sounded through the pounding in her ears. "I killed her."
For a moment, surprise held her motionless; then a wave of revulsion sent every nerve in her body screaming. "My God! You slaughtered a pregnant woman?" The question hung there, stark and razor sharp between them.
Confusion, then anger hit her harder than any hand. She felt a tightening sensation deep in her chest, the pain of a heart betrayed. Wishing to heaven she had not heard, she pushed stray strands of hair off her forehead with a shaking hand. How could she not suspect his past would be a tangle of cruelty, deceit and murder? She knew what he was.
Trying to comfort her, he reached for her; but she wrenched away. Every muscle in her body went rigid, shoulders taut with a trembling horror. In that moment, she hated him with an intensity that made her ache. She regarded him with a look of thinly veiled malice.
"Who was she?" she demanded through gritted teeth. "This woman you murdered?"
She held her breath, waiting for his answer.
"Her name was Nisidia," he finally admitted. "She was Xavier's wife."
Dismay crossed her sensitive features. Her guts clenched. She felt like she'd swallowed a handful of ground glass. He meant what he was saying; she could hear it in his tone, see it in his face. The knowledge that it was true shook her to the depths of her core. It was truly one of those moments when a gap in the earth could not open quickly enough to consume her.
She swallowed, knotted her hands. She was clinging to her self-control by a very thin thread, shaking so hard that her voice quivered. An awful searing pain lanced through her body. The mutant? The anguish? Both? She did not know. She just knew that it hurt. Bad. "You slept with Xavier's woman?"
He did not flinch or turn his gaze away. He simply confessed. "Yes. I took Nisidia as my mistress after he was cast down."
The tightness in her throat was constricting, threatening to cut off her words before she could speak. She made herself spit them out, as if they tasted bitter.
"Is that how it works in your world? To the victor goes the woman of the vanquished?" She narrowed her eyes, sending daggers of pure hatred. In her mind, what he had done to a woman and innocent child was a disgrace, a defilement. He was a bastard. She hated his guts.
His eyes narrowed. "Do not look at me like that," he snapped, clearly more angry with himself than her. Irritation put a hard edge on his accent. A vein in his temple began to throb. Lips drawing down in a scowl, he briefly pressed two fingers to the pulse, fighting an internal battle to still the pain it threatened to bring.
"How should I look at you?" she demanded. Her voice was high, hysterical. She was crying now, deep, shocked sobs coming between her words. "A man who murders the woman carrying his child?"
In an unconscious gesture, her hands went to her flat belly. His unexpected revelation sent her plunging into confusion. An ugly fury rose unbidden.
"How could you!" she raged. A heavy layer of sweat broke out on her forehead. Her mouth was dry. She could not swallow. Her breathing was heavy and painful. She was nauseous, trembling so hard that her legs would barely hold her weight. Just the sight of him sickened her, and she wanted to hurt him as badly as he had wounded her. Before she could halt herself, and without thinking, her hand rose.
He saw the blow coming--open-handed, heading for his face. Before her palm struck, he caught her wrist. His grip tightened, causing her to wince as he slanted her a hard look. "Do not."
Breath coming in short, quick pants of fright, Julienne pulled free. "What if I were to become pregnant? Would you kill me, too?" She flung the words without regard to what she was saying or how much they might wound.
"How dare you even say that to me!" He frowned as if the words were painful to speak. The lines around his mouth were deep. He was angry and barely containing it.
The thing you did not want to see in Morgan was anger. When his obsidian gaze grew hard and his jaw set and his voice got low and precise, there was a definite feeling of fear in the recipient. Julienne refused to let that fear dictate her reaction.
"I have to say it because I'm never really sure where I stand with you. There's so much I can't even begin to guess about you because you play the games of deceit so damned well. The things you've done make my blood run cold!"
His features turned hard as granite. His eyes assumed a veiled glaze, a look that could only be described as defocusing--his way of detaching himself from unpleasant or disturbing happenings in his life. He stepped back, hands dropping, lips thinning. Going to the coffee table, he retrieved his cigarettes and lighter. Lighting one, he walked to the bar, found an open bottle of scotch and poured himself a healthy shot of the amber liquid, then killed it in one quick swallow.
Julienne knew why he was not facing her for the time being. Morgan hated emotional confrontations with a woman, would do anything to avoid it. When push came to shove, he'd rather walk away clean, gone like a goose heading south for the winter. Get too emotional and hysterical and he would leave. He'd done it to Ashleigh Reynolds and he would do the same with her. She had a feeling that he was thinking about that right now. The physical distance parting them wasn't very far, but there was now a disturbing chasm a mile wide.
That's it, she thought, watching him pour a second drink. He's out of it. The silence between them seemed to echo against her eardrums.
He surprised her by not taking that second drink.
Leaning back against the bar, glass in one hand, cigarette in the other, a forlorn expression ghosted across his face, as if his own internal furies had all of a sudden sucked all the energy out of him. The candles cast shadows that only emphasized the dark circles bruising the skin under his eyes. He was just as tired and worn as she was.
"If you think any of that was easy for me to confess, you are wrong," he said, tension electrifying the air between them. "What I did not only cost me the life of my lover and my child, it cost me my freedom--my very soul, even." He paused and lifted his cigarette. Its tip glowed a furious red as he inhaled. There was an unsettled edge to his movements. His own nerves were strung tight, ready to snap. Sheer will was holding him together, keeping him functioning.
"You find me insufferable now?" he continued through a stream of smoke, voice tinged with bitterness. "Get in line. I was there first. I hated myself for bedding her and I hated myself that we used each other to inflict pain and revenge on yet another. It was wrong. I will not deny it."
Another pause. Another long drag off his cigarette, flicking away gray ashes that fell on the carpet at his feet. He swore under his breath and tightened his grip on the glass, close to shattering it. At this point she could say nothing.
"Dying, taking that to the grave…That would be too easy. Every day I draw breath, I pay for that mistake in more ways than one." He lifted the glass, but did not drink, swirling the amber liquid as he stared into its depth. "I have done everything I can to forget, but those memories will never let me have any peace. Until that time, I had some honor. I was not a killer of women and children. Then, I crossed that line and there was no going back."
Listening to his words, Julienne felt a thousand different emotions rushing through her. Her hands hung limp at her sides. Her strength was spent, and she was exhausted by the play of intense emotions. Her feet felt like lead when she dragged herself to a chair and sat down, her back to him so she wouldn't have to look at him anymore.
"What you did makes you no better than Xavier," she managed to push through numb lips. So, there's the truth of his past, out in the open between us, she thought bitterly. In a moment of sheer passion, he had handed the sorcerer his key to return to power and damned himself.
"Perhaps that is why I could never bring myself to kill him," he muse
d. "When I believed he'd killed you, it was check and mate. The score had been evened."
Suspicion slammed into her skull. "Is that all I am to you?" she asked, voice no more than a whisper. "A pawn you manipulated to assuage your conscience?" She shook her head, making a sound of disgust deep in the back of her throat. "You two bastards are playing a really sick game."
She clasped her hands together in her lap. Her skin was clammy, her fingers feeling like thin sticks. She made a great effort to quell the reckless hate and burning recriminations racing inside her skull. It was almost impossible to do. She could hardly breathe under the crushing weight. She was afraid of him; and yet, for a long time now, she'd had to admit that he provoked profound emotions in her. He had become more than a lover. He was a part of her.
Shocked as she was, she understood she had reached a boundary of no return. The relationship they shared was unalterable, and she could not walk away. And, just as she could not stand to be close to him at this moment, neither could she endure the idea of putting him out of her life. Without him, she had no life. Still, the wounds that he had just inflicted would never completely heal. Staring into the fire, she let the dancing flames carry her back to the day she'd first met him. The details came so clearly to mind that they might have taken place only the day before. Seeing him then, she'd wanted him. Maybe she still did. She wasn't sure. How she wished she could suddenly be stricken deaf and dumb. Why did he have to tell her this now? Why tell her ever?
Keep calm, she tried to council herself. Anger will accomplish nothing.
Morgan put down his glass, then extinguished the remains of his cigarette. "I have never really known what you were meant to mean to me," he replied. "But I want to find out."
She refused to look at him, immediately striking down his olive branch. At this point all his words were was an unpleasant drone in her ears. "Do you?" she spat over her shoulder, half in disgust.
His reply from behind was directly stated. "Yes."
When she said nothing in return, he left the bar and crossed to where she sat. He knelt in front of her. Her body stiffened in anticipation as to what he would do.
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